


Flashback

by radiofreekerberos



Series: Ocean of Storms [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Sheith Positivity Week 2017, Shiro (Voltron) Whump, Whump Fic, Young Shiro, mer!Keith, mermaid au, scary injuries, young keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 22:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11656464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: When Shiro was ten-years-old, he lost his right arm in a boating accident and found a mystery. Part one of the Ocean of Storms series.A light rain began to fall and the sea turned choppy, dark waves sloshing over the sides of the boat. Shiro barely noticed, his eyes cast unseeing at a fixed point on the horizon until something suddenly caught his eye, a luminous spot in the water. His brow knit as he watched it slowly gliding towards him; a lavender glow just below the choppy surface. It veered off at the last minute to glide alongside the boat, and Shiro tracked its movements with fascination. Whatever if was, it wasn’t very big. Maybe roughly his size, though most of its length seemed to be made up of a long and powerful tail.





	Flashback

**Author's Note:**

> If people would be interested in seeing more of this, I could totally be persuaded to continue the story in the present day.

When Shiro was ten-years-old, he lost his right arm in a boating accident. It happened three miles or so off shore. He was alone in the little motorboat he and his dad used for fishing in the waters off Agate Beach. Normally he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to be there on his own, since even as a child Shiro had an overinflated sense of responsibility, but he wasn’t feeling particularly responsible that day. 

That was the day they’d buried his dad.

The funeral had been that morning, the skies above the cemetery as gray as Shiro’s mood. He was in the front row of course, which meant there was nothing to hide behind. His mom sat stoically beside him, blinking tears she refused to let fall. There were a lot of people there as well. It seemed as if the entire town came out to pay their respects, along with about five-hundred relatives Shiro barely knew beyond the occasional Christmas card. 

When it was over, Shiro’s mom made him shake the reverend’s hand and thank him for the lovely service, though how adults could find any aspect of death “lovely” was beyond him. 

They’d walked back to the long row of parked cars in silence, his mother barely looking at him, as if one look at his stricken face would break her resolve. She was trying to be strong for him, but somehow it just made him feel all the more guilty about not being able to keep his own emotions in check.

As soon as they’d returned home, Shiro had slipped away, feeling stifled by the house full of chatting strangers. It was nothing to them, he’d suddenly realized. The following day they would pick up their lives exactly where they’d left off. It hardly seemed fair when _his_ life had changed so irrevocably. 

Still dressed in his Sunday best he’d gone down to the jetty behind the house and untied the motorboat. He’d carefully guided the small craft away from the landing. Then he’d taken off, throwing the throttle wide open to speed away before anyone could notice that he was gone. He kept one hand firmly on the rudder handle, just like his dad taught him, and quickly guided the small craft further down the coast. 

The further he traveled, the more his eyes seemed to fill with tears, His breath catching until he was gasping with great heaving sobs, he clawed at the tie knotted at his throat, loosening it as if it were cutting off his air supply. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve, though he knew his mother wouldn’t approve, and turned the rudder until he was headed for open water where there would be few people on such a gray day to witness his breakdown.

“We have our memories to comfort us,” his mother had told him, and maybe for her it was some comfort, but Shiro couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he would spend the rest of his life missing his dad instead of being with him. Memories, even good ones, were cold comfort when they were the last ones you’d ever have.

A light rain began to fall and the sea turned choppy, dark waves sloshing over the sides of the boat. Shiro barely noticed, his eyes cast unseeing at a fixed point on the horizon until something suddenly caught his eye, a luminous spot in the water. 

His brow knit as he watched it slowly gliding towards him; a lavender glow just below the choppy surface. It veered off at the last minute to glide alongside the boat, and Shiro tracked its movements with fascination. Whatever if was, it wasn’t very big. Maybe roughly his size, though most of its length seemed to be made up of a long and powerful tail.

He watched the softly glowing creature dive beneath the keel of his boat then come up along the other side, wheeling beneath the waves the way dolphins sometimes played in the wakes of boats. Perhaps that’s what it was, though Shiro had never heard of a purple bioluminescent dolphin before. He found himself smiling a little despite himself at the creature’s antics. It circled the little craft playfully, never quite breaching the surface of the churning water.

The dangerously churning water, Shiro noticed for the first time since heading out. The glowing sea creature forgotten, Shiro had looked up to find the rain smeared horizon ahead of him being quickly engulfed by looming black clouds. “Crud,” he murmured, mostly because his mom frowned on swearing.

The skies chose that exact moment to open up. 

Shivering, Shiro gripped the rudder handle, his teeth chattering as icy sheets of rain beat down on his head. His tiny boat began bouncing unsteadily atop the churning waves. He’d been struggling to maneuver the bucking craft through the aggressively cresting water and back toward the shore when the rogue wave hit, crashing into him from behind and sweeping him into the water.

Immediately his body seized up from the cold, his arms and legs barely able to move as he’d fought against the undertow that was trying to drag him further down into the depths. A second wave hit him sending him tumbling head over heels into the propeller of the boat. The spinning blades cut deep into his face and chest and sheared his right arm off just above the elbow. 

He’d screamed, his lungs filling with water, before something abruptly grabbed him around the waist and propelled him straight back up to the surface. Shiro gasped, choking on blood and sea water as his head hit the stormy air. 

The last thing he saw before crumbling blackness robbed him of sight was the frightened face of a boy perhaps a year or two younger than him. His hair was long and dark, framing elfin features of pale lavender and delicately pointed ears. His wide eyes were an unlikely shade of violet that seemed to shift to indigo then back to violet again, and his skin was softly glowing with bioluminescence. 

Six days later, Shiro woke up in a hospital bed, his mother asleep in a chair at his bedside. His face was completely numb and his chest felt tight. There was a breathing tube inserted into the notch at his throat, maybe it had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t breathe through his nose at all. 

A tentative touch with his left hand told him why, it was completely packed with gauze. For some reason he couldn’t move his right hand at all. It was hard with the breathing tube, but he managed to shift his head slightly to the right to find his arm was gone, swathed in a tangle of thick white bandages that ended several inches above where his elbow used to be. 

He must have made some sort of sound then, a groan of dismay, because his mother was suddenly awake and running her fingers through his hair. He’d whimpered, sloppy tears sliding down his cheeks as she’d murmured soothing words to him, telling him that everything was going to be okay. He was going to be okay. 

The surgeon had already been in to see him. The robotic replacement for his arm would be just as functional as the real thing. He’d barely even notice the difference. Shiro had closed his eyes then, embarrassed by his own stupidity. He wished he could wipe the tears from his eyes instead of having to rely on his mom to do it for him. 

He wished his dad was there.

Apparently he’d been found laying on the shore near the tide pools of Agate beach. His wounds had been tended with seaweed poultices and the tie he’d been wearing had been used as a tourniquet to staunch the flow of blood from his severed arm. 

As for the accident itself, Shiro had no recollection of it, something the doctor later told him was common in traumatic injury cases. The identity of his rescuer remained a mystery as well. Shiro never could remember exactly what happened that day, which was frustrating, because somehow he just _knew_ that he’d forgotten something important.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


End file.
